The following is a post on LSE by earache. He wondered if you...

The following is a post on LSE by earache. He wondered if you guys had any comments / views regarding timescales:

KC did indeed say that drill results would be released "as received" but for the last couple of weeks or so I've been wondering if that plan has changed. If so then the question is why. Given what KC said about the reasons for the in-fill drill programme I really can't think of anything that the results might throw up wherein their publication would be damaging to the other currently ongoing negotiations. So have we actually got them and is he holding them back? Or have we been underestimating the timescales involved?

This is what we know:

Drilling started 25th May. 6 cores for 2,800m. Ave 466.6m. 2 rigs on site.

5 cores completed by 16th Aug. First result announced.
Table 1 - Completed drillholes, Cinovec South

Hole ID North East Elevation (m) Depth (m) Azimuth Dip Comments
CIS-4 -966605.9 -778582.9 863 448 16.6 -84.6 Infill, completed
CIS-5 -966607.8 -778585.1 862.8 458.8 271.8 -81.28 Infill, completed
CIS-6 -966516.0 -778544.1 866.2 456 28.8 -86.97 Infill, completed
CIS-7 -966454.0 -778655.3 864.4 450.3 0 -90 Infill, completed
CIS-8 -966570.0 -779163.0 805 350 340 -70 Infill, completed
CIS-9 -966570.0 -779163.0 805 0 25 -68 ongoing

Total depth drilled - 2,163m. Ave 432.6m. CIS-8 was only 340m so CIS-9 needs to be 637m if we're still drilling 2,800m. Any thoughts on this RH? You've got all the maps and geology to hand.

So 12 weeks to drill 5 cores and get first result. 2 rigs drill 2,163m in 12 weeks = 90m per week per drill so CIS-9 will take 7 weeks for 637m. That takes us to next week so depending on just how 'ongoing' it was at 16th Aug it may or may not yet be complete. I appreciate that there is an overlap from the first drill and time is needed to move and set up the rigs. We may also cut CIS-9 short as we did with CIS-8. Your thoughts on this as well please RH.

The first drill was 448m with nothing for the first 279.7m. We then had 148.3m of intercepts containing at least 16 intervals of varying grades of Li, Sn and W to send for analysis. If CIS-4 (at 90m pw) took 5 weeks to drill then the shipping to Romania and analysis took 7 weeks in total to announce.

Again I appreciate there may have been an overlap on delivering and analysing the various intercepts but you can't release results until the last one is finished and so timescales are dependent on the total interval under examination. Dependent on the capacity and workload of ALS they may have been able to analyse cores in parallel but I'm guessing they're pretty busy at the moment.

If the above is correct then we don't yet have all the results. We may even not have the 2nd and 3rd yet. Have we been beating ourselves up for nothing?